1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to metrics determined based on preference information. More specifically, the invention relates to a variety of metrics that are determined based on preference information associated with respondents and are usable at least to evaluate products and/or markets.
2. Description of the Related Art
During the design of a product, a manufacturer must choose from among several available product features, or attributes, to include in the product. For each included attribute, a manufacturer must also choose an attribute level to associate with the attribute. Attribute levels that may be associated with the attribute “color” include “black”, “white”, “blue”, etc.
Trade-off analysis techniques determine preference information associated with respondent consumers in an attempt to identify product configurations or combinations of attribute levels that promote a particular objective, such as value creation, value capturing, maximizing sales, maximizing profit, minimizing competitors' sales, etc. A respondent, in this regard, may be any entity having particular preferences for particular product attributes and attribute levels. Such respondents include individuals, businesses, and purchasing managers. Many techniques exist for determining preference information associated with respondents, including those discussed in above-mentioned U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 09/754,612 and 09/845,051.
Some conventional systems gather preference information by asking a respondent several questions regarding her product needs or her preferences for particular product features. The preference information is then used to identify a product that is arguably suited to the respondent. Other systems use gathered preference information to compare the relative attractiveness of products. For example, these systems allow comparison between the attractiveness of a Sony television priced at $599 and the attractiveness of a Magnavox television priced at $399. Such a comparison is possible because the preference information includes numerical values associated with respondent's preferences for each attribute and attribute level on which different products can be described and on which the products may vary among one another. Accordingly, the relative attractiveness of differences or changes in an attribute with respect to differences or changes in any other attribute can be determined simply by comparing appropriate associated numerical values. For example, the attractiveness of a price change from $599 to $399 may be compared with the attractiveness of a brand change from Magnavox to Sony.
Such usages of preference information are not particularly useful for making business decisions and for evaluating a product market, either because of inaccuracies or because they cannot provide answers to useful questions about a product market. Many potential users of current systems for processing preference information, including manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, and market analysts, therefore do not believe that benefits provided by the current systems outweigh their costs. Consequently, what is needed is a system to process preference information that produces data that is more useful than that produced by current systems. Such a system may allow a manufacturer to choose product configurations, as well as production amounts and prices for each product configuration, which increase customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and overall profit.